"I just wanted to see if it worked all right," I said, still shaking slightly. It could have blown up or electrocuted me, for all I knew. "But they always work," he said. "Ah--always?" "Of course. The principle is simple and there are no parts to get worn out, so they last indefinitely." He suddenly smiled as if he'd just caught the gist. "Oh, you were joking! Naturally--everybody learns about the Dynapack in primary education. You were interested in acquiring one?" "No, no. The--the old one is good enough. I was just--well, you know, interested in knowing if the new models are much different or better than the old ones." "But there haven't been any new models since 2073," he said. "Can you think of any reason why there should be?" "I--guess not," I stammered. "But you never can tell." "You can with Dynapacks," he said, and he would have gone on if I hadn't lost my nerve and mumbled my way out of the store as fast as I could. * * * * * You want to know why? He'd asked me if I wanted to "acquire" a Dynapack, not _buy_ one. I didn't know what "acquire" meant in that society. It could be anything from saving up coupons to winning whatever you wanted at some kind of lottery, or maybe working up the right number of labor units on the job--in which case he'd want to know where I was employed and the equivalent of social security and similar information, which I naturally didn't have--or it could just be fancy sales talk for buying. I couldn't guess, and I didn't care to expose myself any more than I had already. And my blunder about the Dynapack working and the new models was nothing to make me feel at all easier. Lord, the uncertainties and hazards of being in a world you don't know anything about! Daydreaming about visiting another age may be pleasant, but the reality is something else again. "Wait a minute, friend!" I heard the salesman call out behind me. * * * * * I looked back as casually, I hoped, as the pedestrians who heard him. He was walking quickly toward me with a very worried expression on his face. I stepped up my own pace as unobtrusively as possible, trying to keep a lot of people between us, meanwhile praying that they'd think I was just somebody who was late for an appointment. The salesman didn't break into a run or yell for the cops, but I couldn't be sure he wouldn't. As soon as I came to a corner, I turned it and ran like hell. There was a sort of alley down the block. I jumped into it, found a basement door and stayed inside, pressed against the wall, quivering with tension and sucking air like a swimmer who'd stayed underwater too long. Even after I got my wind back, I wasn't anxious to go out. The place could have been cordoned off, with the police, the army and the navy all cooperating to nab me.